My favorite "living" author has now passed. I am deeply grieved, however, I am not surprised. Think about it...how many of the genious minds of the 20th and 21st centuries have taken their own life?-- Quickly- Cobain, Elliot Smith, and now HS Thompson. Their words will live on forever- just a shame that they are not/won't be here to see it. God Bless Hunter S. Thompson.

To HST- Thank you for fucking with our minds and making us see the world in a whole different light. When you get to hell, share a cigar with the devil. After he sends you up to heaven---armwrestle with God. I have $5 saying that you'll win. If not, we'll at least have a good laugh for the ten minutes I'm allowed in there. Until then- there's still a bottle of Jameson and a Marlboro Light waiting for you down here-- I hope I die with the bottle in my clutches. Thanks again, you motherfucker.

For everyone else, I leave you with this:

"Call on God- but row away from the rocks."
-Hunter S. Thompson
(1939-2005)

He was fearless. Reckoned you found out peoples true natures by putting them in life threatening situations, (or faking same).
He was a mock, studied, reptile with a huge heart and slid up to some of the weirder fellow american very real reptiles of the late 20th century.
He's gutted Nixon, early Bush, Clinton, Puppet Bush and a host of others on paper in a style that was as passionate as it was unaffected. He looked into dark and heinously immoral souls and had them blinking at his beam as he publicly lifted their rock. He was a freak, one of those rare people who not only survived his appetites but used them to maintain what was his own breed of vicious sanity.
He danced on the narrowest of beams for the longest time.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hunter S. Thompson, a renegade journalist whose "gonzo" style threw out any pretense at objectivity and established the hard-living writer as a counter-culture icon, fatally shot himself at his Colorado home on Sunday night, police said. He was 67.

Thompson's son, Juan, released a statement saying he had found his father dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at the writer's Owl Creek farm near Aspen.

Thompson, famed for such adrenaline-packed narratives as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," turned his drug and alcohol-fueled clashes with authority into a central theme of his work, challenging the quieter norms of established journalism in the process.

He also cultivated an aura of recklessness, starting with the blurb on his book "Hell's Angels," in which he called himself "an avid reader, a relentless drinker and a fine hand with a .44 Magnum."

A longtime gun enthusiast, Thompson had a shooting range on his property.

"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," said the statement released on behalf of Juan and Thompson's wife, Anita.

By his heyday in the 1970s, Thompson had distilled his style of invective-laced, outlaw journalism into a slogan: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," adapted from a two-part article written for Rolling Stone magazine in late 1971, chronicled Thompson's drug-fueled misadventures in Las Vegas while ostensibly covering a motorcycle race in the desert.

'WRITER OF SIGNIFICANCE'

The book established Hunter as a cult celebrity and became the basis for a 1998 Hollywood adaptation, starring Johnny Depp as Thompson's alter-ego, Raoul Duke.

Thompson's refracted coverage of the Super Bowl and the 1972 presidential race also inspired the 1980 movie "Where the Buffalo Roam," with Bill Murray as the self-proclaimed doctor of gonzo journalism.

He was also caricatured as "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip Doonesbury, right down to his signature aviator glasses and cigarette holder.

Although Thompson's later work got mixed reviews, critics credited him with pioneering a style of invective-laced and hyperbolic political commentary that was uniquely American.

A 1994 essay in Rolling Stone written as an obituary for former President Richard Nixon was typical. At a time when many commentators offered a more generous re-assessment of Nixon's legacy, Thompson called him "a liar, a quitter and a bastard. A cheap crook and a merciless war criminal."

"I think Thompson has remained a writer of significance, because, essentially a satirist, he has displayed an utter contempt for power -- political power, financial power, even showbiz juice," novelist Paul Theroux wrote in 2003.

Raised in a middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky, Thompson's father died when he was 14, and by 18 he had been jailed for his part in a robbery.

After a stint in the Air Force working as a sports editor, he became a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Puerto Rico.

In 1965, Thompson broke through with an article about the Hell's Angels that he turned into a critically hailed book.

It was his association with Rolling Stone that turned both into literary icons -- even though Thompson initially considered the upstart San Francisco-based magazine "a bunch of faggots and hippies."

I was lucky enough to meet and very briefly hang out with Hunter Thompson after one of his college lectures in the early 80's. He was friendly, polite, funny, intense, and a gentleman. He had a Dunhills cigarette in one hand and a glass of Chivas in the other, and he didn't let go of either one. I'll never forget him or his writing.

A lot of people are going to speculate about his suicide. I suggest they get a copy of his book The Great Shark Hunt and read his essay on Hemingway.

NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER....HE WAS A LIAR ND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA. ...BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON:

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is becoming the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."--REVELATION 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing--a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that I know Iwill go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, andI am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hatedNixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said. "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive--and he was, all theway to the end--we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instinctsof a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by thehead with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style--and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

............

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern--but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him--except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

.............
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
................

The latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine devotes its cover & almost the entire contents to Hunter Thompson - his life, his writing, his friends & family, and his gonzo legend. This is a must read for any fan of his. Highlights include many hilarious & emotional stories from the people closest to him. The concluding essay by his son, who heard Hunter commit suicide, does not leave a dry eye in the house.

Because I've got a hard-on (so to speak) for Watergate, I just paid something in the neighborhood of twelve dollars american for an old Rolling Stone that features the article, "Fear and Loathing At the Watergate."

The thing to remember about HST is not everything he wrote was brilliant especially when he got indulgent but his best stuff is just glorious. I started reading his books when I was a teenager purely because of the cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and in one book I became a huge fan of HST and Ralph Steadman. He seems to be the kind of guy who would have been a great friend if you understood him and a twat if you didn't. The world is always a better place with people like him in it.

It was my great pleasure to meet Ralph Steadman last summer at a lit fest in Cornwall. He was there to do a tribute to HST by being interviewed as the man himself. It was very funny. Afterwards I had a chat with him and he said how Hunter had told him back in the 70s how he never wanted to live in a position where he was not in control of himself. They even designed his memorial all those years ago. It was because of his fear of becoming disabled, from a hip injury, that he took his life. He gathered his family around him and then went into the kitchen and phoned his wife. It was at that point that he shot himself.

Wow,
Cool story. I am big HST fan and thru him discovered Steadman's work. One of my favorite Thompson books is "The Curse of Lono", in which Steadman did the illustrations. Great stuff. I also own a copy of his children's book, "No Room to Swing a Dead Cat". Pretty twisted, but great images It must have been great to share a conversation with him. Thanks for sharing your story.
Alfredo.

__________________
"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool - William Shakespeare

I also meant to mention...
...although I'm sure many of you are already aware. Steadman did all the lables for the Flying Dog Brewery,http://www.flyingdogales.com/
They all feature very fun images. The beer's not bad either... beerrrrrrrr, sweeeeet beeeer (spoken in best Homer Simpson vioce) I believe that both Thompson and Steadman are/were both involved in the brewery in some capacity.
Alfredo

__________________
"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool - William Shakespeare

Originally posted by fettucinibrother Wow,
Cool story. I am big HST fan and thru him discovered Steadman's work. One of my favorite Thompson books is "The Curse of Lono", in which Steadman did the illustrations. Great stuff. I also own a copy of his children's book, "No Room to Swing a Dead Cat". Pretty twisted, but great images It must have been great to share a conversation with him. Thanks for sharing your story.
Alfredo.

When I met Steadman I took a load of books for him to sign. He didnt just sign them he drew a picture in each! Including my copy of The Curse of Lono which now has a drawing of HST on the title page with the O's of Lono as his eyes! How cool is that.,PS I didn't know about the Flying Dog stuff. Thanks for that.